Famous Quotes / Quotations about Liberty

Famous Quotations / Quotes
Famous Quotes about Liberty

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Imprisonment, as it exists today, is a worse crime than any of those committed by its victims. -- George Bernard Shaw

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- George Bernard Shaw

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth. -- George Bernard Shaw

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. -- George Bernard Shaw

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners. -- George Bernard Shaw

The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it. -- George Bernard Shaw

Marx’s Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element. -- George Bernard Shaw

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. -- George Bernard Shaw

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw

If the governments devalue the currency in order to betray all creditors, you politely call this procedure 'inflation'. -- George Bernard Shaw

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't. -- George Bernard Shaw

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. -- George Bernard Shaw

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance. -- George Bernard Shaw

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. -- George Bernard Shaw

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. -- George Bernard Shaw

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for it's own sake. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations. -- George Bernard Shaw

-- George Bernard Shaw

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. -- George Bernard Shaw

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses. -- George Bernard Shaw

Nobody can live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure time for freedom than unconventionality does. -- George Bernard Shaw

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?' -- George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. -- George Bernard Shaw

Socialism means equality of income or nothing... under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well. -- George Bernard Shaw

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom. -- George Bernard Shaw

Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another. -- George Bernard Shaw

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. -- George Bernard Shaw

Lack of money is the root of all evil. -- George Bernard Shaw

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live. -- George Bernard Shaw

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. -- George Bernard Shaw

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. -- George Bernard Shaw

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic. -- George Bernard Shaw

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. -- George Bernard Shaw

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. -- George Bernard Shaw

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. -- George Bernard Shaw

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads. -- George Bernard Shaw

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. -- George Bernard Shaw

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. -- George Bernard Shaw

The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school. -- George Bernard Shaw

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. -- George Bernard Shaw

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. -- George Bernard Shaw

All great truths began as blasphemies. -- George Bernard Shaw

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. -- George Bernard Shaw

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essense of inhumanity. -- George Bernard Shaw

A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody. -- George Bernard Shaw

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. -- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -- George Bernard Shaw

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind. -- George Bernard Shaw

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one. -- George Bernard Shaw

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself. -- George Bernard Shaw

I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well. -- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- George Bernard Shaw

Whether you think Jesus was God or not, you must admit he was a first-rate political economist. -- George Bernard Shaw

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind. -- George Bernard Shaw

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. -- George Bernard Shaw

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. -- George Bernard Shaw

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- George Bernard Shaw

Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity. -- Henry Wheeler Shaw

There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. -- Hartley Shawcross

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure? -- Harry Shearer

[A]nd obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men and of the human frame, A mechanized automaton. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is no real wealth but the labor of man. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Power, like a desolating pestilence,\\ Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,\\ Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,\\ Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame,\\ A mechanized automaton. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

There is as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a humming-bird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. -- Morris Sheppard

Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give they a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling court, and let me have but an unfettered press. I will defy them to encroach a hair’s breadth upon the liberties of England. -- Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A committee is a group of individuals who all put in a perfectly good color, and it comes out gray. -- Alan Sherman

The few who could understand the system will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of the people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests. -- John Sherman

The Government made by a number of Sovereign States. -- Roger Sherman

If the president alone was vested with the power of appointing all officers, and was left to select a council for himself, he would be liable to be deceived by flatterers and pretenders to patriotism. -- Roger Sherman

The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war. -- Roger Sherman

The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war. -- Roger Sherman

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast. -- William Tecumseh Sherman

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. -- William Tecumseh Sherman

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell. -- William Tecumseh Sherman

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